Bare Pleasures

by Lindsay Evans

  Under the table, Lex clenched his fist so hard his arm trembled. “Noelle...”

  She looked up at him, onyx eyes damp in the soft light, mouth still red from her lipstick, her hair a thick fall around her face and her shoulders. “Yes?”

  Lex smoothed his damp palm down the cotton of his slacks, felt his thigh muscle jump with nervous energy. He opened his mouth to ruin everything between them.

  But nothing came out.

  Noelle looked at him in expectation, but, when he remained quiet, she took a sip from her glass of water and picked up her purse. “You know what?” Noelle opened the purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and slipped it under the vase of daisies. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Lex shook himself from the ice of indecision, removed his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out enough money to pay for the meal, mentally doing a tally in his head including tax and a generous tip. He slid the money in place of Noelle’s and pushed the bill back into her hand. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  For a moment, it looked like she would protest, but he stood up and gestured toward the exit, waiting for her to leave her chair. It wasn’t until they were walking through the restaurant that Lex realized how long they’d been there. When they first arrived, nearly every table had been full. Now the place only had a few people still eating, the candles on the tables extinguished, leaving the tables themselves like squat shadows hugging the walls and lurking around corners, waiting for the next batch of victims, drunk on love or just the idea of romance, to walk back into their lair.

  On the way out, Lex told the hostess standing bored at her station that they’d left money for the check and then he followed Noelle out into the warm night, wondering what else she had in mind for the rest of their date.

  Chapter 11

  The parking lot of the restaurant was nearly deserted. Only half a dozen cars, including Lex’s Charger, remained and, since the restaurant had been crowded when they got there, the black sedan was a good walk away from the front door and under a sheltering of trees. Noelle walked silently at Lex’s side.

  Dinner hadn’t gone exactly as she’d planned. Her apology went off without a hitch, but talking about family and the pain and pleasure of having people in your life who both looked out for you and hurt you, sometimes equally, had left her on the verge of tears. Noelle loved Margot, but at the best of times, her sister was too much for her to handle. Since Noelle became an adult, they’d dealt with each other best over the phone.

  The car chirped and flashed its lights when Lex unlocked it.

  “Home?” He asked the simple question, opening the door for her.

  “Home is fine.” She climbed into the car. “I’m heading out for an early brunch with Ruby and Malia tomorrow. I don’t want to be too tired to enjoy them or the food.”

  He slid the key into the ignition but didn’t turn on the engine. The car’s interior lights slowly faded, leaving them enclosed in the dark. “It’s all right to tell your sister you want to live your life in peace,” Lex began softly, his deep voice resonant in the car’s shadowed warmth. “You’re both adults. I’m sure she loves you and will understand if you tell her you want to find your own lovers and your own job.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Noelle protested. Margot had been directing her life for a long time.

  “It is.” Lex’s certainty almost made her believe it.

  She drew a deep breath and incidentally pulled the scent of his cologne, of man, into her lungs. He smelled like the sea, like a hint of the stewed beef he’d eaten in the restaurant. When he spoke, a breath of the red wine they’d shared reached her nose. It made her wonder how he would taste. If it would be like their kiss at the club, all dirty intentions that called up the phantom sensation of Lex’s body moving against hers, naked and sweat-slick, the thick heat of him between her legs and driving relentlessly into her. Noelle shifted her thighs under the dress, aware of the growing dampness in her panties.

  He’d kissed her so well that Noelle thought she would come right there just from the hot stroke and lick of his tongue alone. If he hadn’t turned her down, she was very sure they would’ve had sex that night. But he was celibate.

  Did that mean no more kissing?

  Noelle turned her head toward the open window of the car, trying to clear her nose of his intoxicating scent and pay attention to what he was saying. She cleared her throat.

  “Maybe one day she and I will have that conversation,” she said. “But it won’t be tomorrow.”

  “Or even next week.”

  “Or even next week,” she echoed, despite his obvious disappointment. Why was he so damn invested in this anyway?

  But instead of being irritated by his persistence in discussing what she did or didn’t do with her life, she was actually...touched. For so long, Margot had been the only one who really showed any care and tenderness for her. Even friends, as wonderful as they were, had never been concerned enough about her life to push her toward something that was a little uncomfortable but had the potential for a big payoff. His concern warmed her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what? I haven’t done anything except piss you off tonight.”

  “You’ve definitely done more than that.” She leaned over the gearshift and kissed him.

  Like nothing else she’d done since she lost her parents, kissing Lex was a risk. He drew in a breath against her lips, mouth burgundy-flavored, a red she tasted on his lips and wanted to lick from his tongue until she was drunk from it. She wanted this. In the club, she’d asked him to come home with her. She asked him with the proof that he wanted her pushing hard into her belly. She’d asked out loud and somehow shattered the moment between them. This time, she had no intention of asking.

  He put hands on her shoulders. “Noelle.”

  It should have been obvious what he wanted with the way he said her name, drawing out the syllables with a sigh, but instead it was all ambiguity. Nothing like when they’d been on the boat and he was two breaths from burying himself deep inside her, with no hesitation. His reticence now forced her to be even more direct with what she wanted.

  “You’re gorgeous,” she said and kissed him more deeply as she climbed to her knees in the seat, leaning into him to clasp his face between her hands and lick along his mouth, tonguing her way inside to taste his teeth, the soft flesh behind his lips. He breathed out her name and she smiled against his mouth, nibbled on the plump pink of his bottom lip and sucked it in her mouth.

  He made a noise, hot and urgent with want, but he didn’t touch her. If anything, he sank deeper into his seat. The leather moaned and exhaled its particular scent, and, beneath that, she smelled him too. Masculine and almost too warm, an insistent heat she wanted at the back of her throat. Noelle scraped a hand along his jaw, teasing at the faint stubble that pricked her fingers, one by one. The sound of the rough hairs against her fingertips, loud in the locked and airless car, sparked goose bumps along her body. He flinched into her touch and opened his mouth for her.

  “Noelle...” He moaned her name, no ambiguity this time, the breath hitching at the back of his throat like a sob.

  She opened her mouth over his and swallowed her name. Want snapped in her belly when a wordless sound vibrated between them. She pressed closer and felt his arms, long and locked and straining, fingers hinged tight to the edges of his seat, squeaking against the leather, as if that grip alone would save him from the conflagration Noelle already felt rising between them. She climbed into his lap, hiking up her skirt to flirt at the tops of her thighs, and she felt him groan again.

  He was hard for her. She pressed down into him and he bucked up into her. “Yeah?”

  “Noelle...?” He pressed her name between his teeth until the syllables sounded like pain, but when he grabbed her thighs to keep her pressing down on
him, she knew she’d won whatever battle was raging between her and his celibacy. Noelle reached back, unzipped her dress and the thin cotton tumbled down around her shoulders, around her waist. In the darkness of the car, with only the light from the parking lot to illuminate what they were doing, he was fierce and shadowed, his eyes flicking down to her suddenly naked breasts. He licked his lips, gripped her thighs hard enough to bruise. But, other than that, he did nothing. Noelle smiled. Then she licked her thumbs, one after the other, rubbed the new wetness there across her already hard nipples. Once. Twice. Moaned at how good it felt with his breath huffing against her skin. Lex licked his lips again, obviously hungry for what she had, so she fed him. Took a breast in hand and, with her thumb under her nipple, put it in his mouth. He opened his mouth, breath gusting with a sigh over her skin, lips latching onto her nipple with masculine greed. He sucked and she whimpered at the sensation that uncurled between her legs.

  He moaned into her skin, reached up almost tentatively to touch the other breast. But once it was under his hand, he plucked her nipple, flicked it, humming with pleasure as she snaked in his lap and slowly went out of her mind from just his mouth alone. Her panties were soaked and the desperate scent of her was hot in the car. The power had shifted. A butterfly touch stroked her panty line, and it was her turn to gasp a little louder. His touch became firmer, curving under the fabric to feel her. She groaned as his fingers slid in her wetness, stroked a moan from her lips and then stuttering versions of his name.

  Lex’s mouth left her breast with a soft pop and his shadowed eyes rose to hers. “Backseat,” he growled.

  She wasted no time getting there, scrambling off his lap and moving to the wider space without an ounce of shame, although she felt the relatively cool air on her bare bottom and on the sliver of her sex Lex had exposed when he pulled her panties to the side. Between settling herself behind tinted windows and wishing Lex would hurry, she felt him behind her, lying on his back on the long seat and pushing her forward, until her forehead bumped almost tenderly into the glass. Noelle shivered at the metallic sound of his belt buckle being undone and then his zipper. A gentle hand snaked around her belly and pulled her slowly and backward up his body over the fabric of his slacks, his bare and furred thighs, the jut of his hips and...

  “I’ve wanted you for so long.” He groaned into the back of her neck as he fingered aside her panties again. “So damn long.”

  Another part of him, latex-covered and much bigger, nudged at her wetness, stroked over her before sliding deeply and firmly home. Noelle clenched around him, wet and urgent, the pleasure from just having him inside her enough to make her moan his name. Her breath stuttered in her throat when he slid a hand in her panties to stroke her clit. Fingers tugged at her nipples one after the other and she felt her entire world begin to rock with the first movements of Lex’s hips.

  It was the first time that night but not the last.

  Chapter 12

  At dance class the next day, she was sore. And Ruby did not miss it. During their first break, she practically pounced on Noelle.

  “He left you walking funny, huh?”

  From her seat on the low bench near the studio’s open window, Noelle groaned silently behind the towel hiding her face. With the excuse of wiping the sweat from her brow and neck, she hid her hot cheeks before she looked at Ruby.

  “Why do you always mess with me?”

  “I’m thinking that’s a yes.” Ruby’s gaze was wicked and pleased and she inspected Noelle from the top of her ponytailed head to the New Balance sneakers on her feet. “I bet he knocked it right out of the park.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Malia emerged from a group of dancers nearby, which included a new guy who looked, according to her, like the Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle, especially when he wore his sweats real tight. Ruby gave Noelle a smiling glance but didn’t say anything about what she’d guessed, sexual bloodhound that she was. Despite her freedom with sex, she wasn’t one to tell someone else’s business.

  “Nothing interesting,” Noelle muttered. She folded her towel over her thigh. “I went out with Lex last night and—”

  “Rode him like a racehorse?” Malia asked with a dirty smile.

  “Um... I wouldn’t say that, but we did have fun together.” She adjusted and readjusted her ponytail, desperately needing something to do with her hands while the two women looked at her like she’d just confessed to winning a million-dollar jackpot.

  “Wow...” Malia sat on the floor near Noelle’s feet. “Was he amazing in the sack?”

  Ruby leaned closer to hear the answer while Noelle glanced quickly around the room, making sure their conversation was private. Milton held court near the stereo controls, surrounded by most of the people in the class and dispensing witticisms and praise like candy. Nobody was really paying attention to them.

  “I am not going to talk about him like that.” Noelle shook her head, but she couldn’t stop a smile from bursting through.

  “Oh!” Ruby breathed and dropped down beside Malia. “He must be a god between the sheets. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that, like ever.”

  “I smile plenty, thank you very much.”

  “Smile, yes. Big and wide like this, hell no.” Ruby looped an arm around Noelle’s shoulders, her expression turning serious. “And that’s okay. It’s good to start healing from old trauma and creating new pleasures and memories.”

  “Yeah...” Malia touched her knee. “The good thing about pain is that it eventually fades away.”

  Across the room, Milton clapped his hands, attracting the class’s attention. “Okay, everyone. Let’s get back to our places and hit this routine one more time.”

  Malia got to her feet. “I want to hear more about this delicious and happy event,” she said.

  “Yes.” Ruby stood up and adjusted the headband around her short hair. “Let’s go to that juice bar we were talking the other day.”

  Although Noelle was a little shy about the idea of sharing details of what she and Lex had done, or even about what they meant to each other, she could use a quick outing with the girls. Their raunchiness and unconditional acceptance kept her sane. A good balance to her own uncertainty about where she and Lex stood. The sex had been amazing, the most satisfying she’d ever had. And despite her suspicion that their night together meant little to Lex, she wanted more.

  “The juice bar sounds good.”

  But at the end of class, Noelle checked her messages while waiting for the girls to finish up in the locker room and saw that she had a voice mail and text from her sister.

  Am I picking you up or do you want to meet there?

  She frowned at the message just as a reminder popped up at the top of the phone.

  Art by Night with Margot.

  Damn. She’d promised her sister she’d go on the art walk without even looking at her calendar. She cursed again.

  Ruby came out of the locker room with jokes. “What’s got you looking so much like your sister?”

  Noelle politely gave her the finger.

  Ruby grinned. “I doubt you even know what to do with that finger.” But she quickly lost the smile. “Seriously though, what’s wrong?”

  “I forgot I agreed to go to this art thing with Margot.” The last thing she wanted to do was see Margot, especially after the intense discussion she and Lex had gotten into about her the other night.

  Malia walked up behind Ruby. “Does that mean you’re ditching us?”

  “I wouldn’t say it like that. My phone just reminded me about it.”

  “I don’t think your phone likes us very much.” Malia pouted.

  “It’s cool, honey.” Ruby gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Go and have family time. Malia and I will talk a bunch of mess about you while we sip our healthy smoothie
s.”

  Noelle rolled her eyes but grabbed Ruby in a tight hug, grateful for her understanding. “I’ll make it up to you guys after next class. My treat.”

  “There’s nothing to make up for. Go! And make sure to tell us what fancy place your sister takes you for dinner and how much everything cost.”

  Laughing, Noelle slung her duffel bag over her shoulder, gave the two women quick hugs and took off. She had just enough time to rush home, take a proper shower and change into something suitable. Even though it was the annual Art by Night—a weekend event similar to Nuit Blanche in Paris and a few other countries—she had the feeling her sister was going to dress up, maybe even have her come along as a plus one at an exclusive party or three.

  After driving only ten miles above the speed limit on surface streets, she was only fifteen minutes late getting to Miami Beach. Noelle climbed out of her car near a Ferris wheel lit up with white halogen lights just for the weekend. The streets streamed with people ready to see the expensive and beautiful art installations in celebration of what Margot called “an elevated Miami.” Artists from all over the world arrived in the city to go to the giant art party. Noelle had only been to Art by Night a few times but never had access to the private parties like her sister. She found Margot near the steep steps of her favorite museum. The steps had been transformed into a neon keyboard and played a note of piano music whenever someone stepped on it.

  “Hey.”

  Margot stood apart from the swirling crowd of mostly adults running up and down the steps and laughing in delight at the notes their feet played. The lights from the steps glowed behind her, outlining her elegant silhouette and bright green shoes. She looked beautiful and untouchable.

  “You look good,” Margot said, smiling, the look of approval glowing in her eyes.

  “Thanks.”

  Noelle was glad she’d made the effort and changed into the black Helmut Lang sheath dress she’d splurged on a few months before. Pairing the dress with her most comfortable high heels, also black, she was fairly certain she wouldn’t embarrass her sister wherever they ended up that night.